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Spain’s government has picked a side in the West’s biggest political battle \u2014 and it insists it has the data to back it up.<\/p>\n
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While most Western governments race to tighten borders, Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez is doubling down on open migration, armed with a technical report making the economic case for why pulling back would be a serious mistake.<\/p>\n
According to their findings, a 30% annual reduction in migration flows would shrink Spain’s GDP by 5% within a decade, 14% by 2055 and 22% by 2075, according to projections drawn up by the National Office of Foresight and Strategy (ONPE). <\/p>\n
That is not a forecast any government would want on its hands.<\/p>\n
The report lands the same week Spain hit a record 22 million employed workers \u2014 a milestone experts partly attribute to sustained migration flows that have accelerated sharply since the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Farms, villages, classrooms<\/p>\n
The consequences of a migration clampdown would reach far beyond the headline GDP figures. <\/p>\n
More than 220,000 agri-food farms could be abandoned within 50 years or nearly three in ten of those operating today, deepening Spain’s chronic rural depopulation crisis. <\/p>\n
Up to 2,300 small municipalities, around 20% of the total, could disappear entirely.<\/p>\n
Provinces such as Orense and Zamora, where the average age already exceeds 50, face demographic conditions the report compares to the Siberian steppe.<\/p>\n
The knock-on effects compound rapidly. Fewer workers means fewer children in schools \u2014 the analysis projects the closure of 32,000 primary classrooms and 18,000 secondary ones. <\/p>\n
Rural primary care centres would follow, stripping remaining residents of basic services and accelerating the very decline they are trying to reverse.<\/p>\n
Who is filling the gaps?<\/p>\n
Migrant workers are already propping up sectors the domestic workforce will not go as eagerly. <\/p>\n
In agriculture \u2014 where poor conditions on farms in Huelva, Almer\u00eda and inland Catalonia have long drawn criticism from rights groups \u2014 they fill roles that would otherwise go empty. <\/p>\n
The report argues that migrants generate between 15% and 25% of the annual increase in average income and do not, contrary to popular assumption, depress the wages or employment prospects of native-born workers.<\/p>\n
The politics are equally charged. An express regularisation scheme introduced in 2018 \u2014 due to be revoked in June \u2014 has granted near-automatic residency to around 240,000 Venezuelan citizens. <\/p>\n
S\u00e1nchez’s deal with Podemos at the time also unlocked an extraordinary regularisation programme, pushed by groups such as Regularisation Now, which has long campaigned against exploitative conditions on Spanish farms.<\/p>\n
No doctors, no carers in an ageing country<\/p>\n
The healthcare system would feel the strain acutely. <\/p>\n
With fewer migrant workers arriving, the supply of care could fall by 28% \u2014 just as the number of elderly dependents rises by nearly 60%, according to ONPE analysts. <\/p>\n
In cities such as Madrid, 90% of carers are already of migrant origin.<\/p>\n
Meeting future care demand would require around 483,600 additional workers on top of current employment levels, analysts say, citing research by BBVA, the University of Cambridge and the OECD. <\/p>\n
Those studies are now over a decade old \u2014 meaning the gap may already be wider than the figures suggest.<\/p>\n
The medical workforce faces its own crunch. <\/p>\n
The Technical Working Group on Migration, made up of nine academics from Spanish universities, estimates a clampdown would reduce the country’s doctor count by 64,000 specialists \u2014 a serious blow to a public health system already battling growing waiting lists and a profession currently on general strike over working conditions.<\/p>\n
Pensions: Spain’s eternal economic taboo<\/p>\n
The pension system adds another layer of pressure. <\/p>\n
By 2075, analysts estimate each beneficiary would need to contribute an additional \u20ac2,000 to maintain current benefit levels \u2014 though they note a paradox: public finances would actually peak between 2050 and 2060, as Generation X, born during Spain’s late Franco-era baby boom, completes its retirement. <\/p>\n
After that, the fiscal cushion deflates rapidly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain’s government has picked a side in the West’s biggest political battle \u2014 and it insists it has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[371,826,824,17,825],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-economy","tag-immigration","tag-psoe","tag-spain","tag-survey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}